Dr. Evangelos I. Kaisar is a Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatics Engineering at Florida Atlantic University, where he also serves as Executive Director of both the Freight Mobility Research Institute (FMRI) and the Multimodal Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory (MITSL). He leads research and education in transportation systems analysis, freight logistics, intelligent transportation systems, and infrastructure resilience, with a strong record of managing large-scale federally and state-sponsored projects.

Throughout his career, Dr. Kaisar has advanced understanding in areas such as traffic modeling, logistics optimization, emergency preparedness, and supply chain security, and he has served on numerous Transportation Research Board committees and editorial boards, including IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. He has published extensively and mentored many graduate students, contributing to both the academic and practical improvement of transportation engineering and mobility planning.

Soheila Saeidi is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree in Transportation Engineering in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatics Engineering at Florida Atlantic University. She serves as a Graduate Research Assistant under the Center for Regional and Rural Connected Communities (CR2C2), where she contributes to federally funded research focused on rural freight mobility, safety, and infrastructure planning. Her research interests include rural freight logistics, traffic safety analysis, autonomous vehicle readiness, and data-driven transportation systems. She applies optimization modeling, simulation, GIS-based spatial analysis, and machine learning techniques to develop practical solutions that improve efficiency, safety, and resilience in underserved and rural communities.